~ Curing Meats & Other DIY Food Projects

Monthly Archives: November 2012

During an August three-day cold smoker session, I started to get smoke-happy. There was a moment where I cold-smoked pears (not good), but most things improve with a little pecan smoke. I had about a dozen limes sitting around the house, mostly for beverage use, and figured why not? Only when I had smoked limes, I had smoked limes. What was I to do? Continue reading →

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Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to dine at the Kyoto incarnation of Chicago’s Next Restaurant. Our meal ended with a course that I thought of as a brave way to end a meal. It was a small confection, warabimochi, that was neither overly sweet nor overly savory. The very next week, a friend sent a few of these little numbers covered in toasted soy powder that she had made herself. It finally hit me why I loved these. Continue reading →

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I resist. Each year, I try. but I fail. I tell myself to avoid the trap of making Thanksgiving a challenge, but I cannot help but dig deep and try to make Thanksgiving exciting and start cool projects. This year, I tried something new. I had made salmon mousseline not long ago and rolled them into dogs, but this time I wanted to make a terrine of smoothly textured turkey and I wanted create a mosaic view of colorful fall vegetables inlaid in the terrine. Continue reading →

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Shocking to most who know how close I am with my family, I have never spent Thanksgiving with my father. While we now switch back and forth between my family and L’s Oklahoma/Texas clan, my family’s Thanksgiving is an epic holiday with over 50 guests, a few state fair winning turkeys, and an amount of sweet potatoes that would floor most of the general public, but my dad, who has been married to my mother for nearly forty years has never attended. He is a hunter and the short season in Wisconsin spans over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Continue reading →

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One of my seminal food experiences was my visit to Cypress this past Spring. For a few years, I had been following the Cypress team. Craig Deihl is the chef at Cypress and is the reigning charcuterie king in the US, but not far behind is his sous chef, Bob Cook. Cook is well known for more than his charcuterie, as he was featured in Garden and Gun Magazine for his Crop Top Kimchi. It was another kimchi dish that caught my attention on Instagram, kimchi deviled eggs. Continue reading →

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A dish from last week’s breakfast for dinner that unexpectedly garnered a bunch of questions was the bloody mary ants on a log with bagel and beer jam – in particular the ants. This was the first dish thought of for the dinner and likely the one that I would repeat, for a few reasons. First and foremost, it tasted good. Second, it was really easy to produce on a larger scale. Next, it was a play on the bloody mary that people could pick out easily and have fun eating. Finally, the furthest “out there” aspect of the dish, the pickled peppercorns were something that no one had ever tried. Continue reading →

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It has been a long time since I had made ice cream, but I recently came out of ice-cream-making retirement for a dinner party/book club meeting hosted by L. We had planned a breakfast for dinner theme and I wanted to finish with a stack of pancakes layered like a cake and topped with ice cream. The obvious choice would have been a quick maple ice cream, but I wanted to step left. As someone who prefers dessert than are not sugar bombs, maple ice cream was out, but what else do people put on flapjacks? Yes, butter. Continue reading →

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When my parents came down to watch me run a marathon in the beginning of October, my dad brought a bag labeled “venison scrap”. When he handed it to me, he said, “I figured if anyone knew what to do with this, you would.” I was half proud and half horrified, but information that I had in my back pocket made me hopeful. The cuts valued by the people cutting the meat (my father and his cousins) are vastly different than the cuts I love, so chances were good I would get some incredibly flavorful wild venison. Continue reading →